Laurel Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
by That's Professor Hawke
Summary: Laurel Potter, the Girl Who Lived: savior of the wizarding world, Hogwarts celebrity, semi-sociopath. It began with a burst of accidental magic that led to her being dragged into the magical world a year earlier than intended, and snowballed from there.
1. Prologue: The Girl Who Lived

**Author's Note:** Just so y'all know, the "Laurel Potter" listed as one of this fanfic's primary characters is a female, alternate-universe version of Harry himself. She is, essentially, an original character inserted into the universe to take the place of Harry himself—a kind of "Naruko" to Harry's "Naruto." I just wanted to get that out of the way now so that those of you who don't like those types of stories can click the back button without wasting any time figuring it out on your own.

If you're still here, then I hope you enjoy the story. Any and all constructive feedback, positive or negative, will be appreciated.

**Disclaimer:** The _Harry Potter_ novels are works of fiction written by J. K. Rowling, and are not, in part or otherwise, my own intellectual property. I am simply a fan of the series with time on his hands, who decided that said time would be best spent writing a pointless story set in a fictional universe created by a far better, and far _richer_, writer. But if you've half a brain in that skull of yours, you didn't actually need me to tell you that.

**~V~**

**Laurel Potter and the Philosopher's Stone  
><strong>- a _Harry Potter_ fan-novel -  
>by<br>That's Professor Hawke

**~V~**

**- Prologue -  
><strong>"**The Girl Who Lived"**

**~V~**

Her facial expression was sublimely flat, devoid of pretty much anything that might hint at what direction the cogs were running beneath her head of untidy, shoulder-length black hair: she appeared neither happy, sad, or angry, seemed neither eager or distressed in any way. Her eyes, a startling, deep shade of green behind their circular spectacles, stared up at the ceiling as she lay there, her gaze almost deadpan, in a way. The most expressive thing about her was that every so often, she would lift her left hand to her forehead, stroking the lightning-bolt scar that adorned her forehead absently with a single finger—usually when she stopped speaking to think about something.

The Mind-Healer's first impression of Laurel Petunia Potter was that she might well be the most jaded ten-year-old girl she had ever taken into her confidence in all the years she'd spent as what the non-magical community might equate with a psychiatrist (the only real difference was that the Mind-Healer had a variety of potions and spells at her disposal to facilitate the therapy). Of course, there weren't many "psychiatrists" in the magical world to begin with. Witches and wizards, she had learned, were far too dependent on magic for their own good sometimes. In matters of medicine and psychology, the non-magical community might well be able to teach the magical world a few helpful lessons—one of the reasons she and some other muggleborns had seen fit to pioneer this particular profession in the aftermath of Lord Voldemort's demise.

Serenity Greengrass was a distant cousin-by-marriage of a blessedly _neutral_ pureblood wizarding family. Being a muggleborn witch brought into the magical community at the start of the troubles that would eventually escalate into a full-blown war over pureblood supremacy, she had been only one of many to have breathed a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief on that day so long ago, when the news of the apparent death or disappearance of that feared dark wizard had come to light. Having once narrowly escaped death once herself, thanks to a brave witch and wizard whose memory she would honor for the rest of her life, Serenity's heart clenched at the sight of her saviors' daughter.

Could this child's new guardian have known? She doubted they were aware, aware that Serenity's life had once been saved by Lily and James Potter, or that while the rest of wizarding Britain had been drinking themselves silly in celebration of the Dark Lord's fall, Serenity herself had been indulging in a more subdued version of that age-old tradition—drowning her own lethargy at the knowledge that the man and woman to whom she'd privately sworn a life-debt had been murdered in cold blood, the Mind-Healer herself powerless to do anything to prevent or change that fact.

She had wondered what arrangements had been made with regards to the child's safety and been stonewalled in every one of her attempts to find out. Not that she'd been surprised... she hadn't known either of them well at all even in school, having graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry a full five years before Lily Evans and James Potter. She hadn't even seen either of them until that terrible evening when the home she had made with her husband—who had almost lost the use of his arm in the attack—had been razed to the ground by Death Eaters. She had never even had an opportunity to thank James and Lily for saving the lives of her husband and son. In the end, she had been powerless to do anything to repay that debt, and could only content herself with the knowledge that the powers-that-be must surely have known the "Girl Who Lived" would be a target, and had doubtless taken measures to ensure the toddler's safety and happiness.

The girl who now lay in her office—styled in the same manner as those of Muggle counselors, after all, if it ain't broke why bother yourself trying to fix what works perfectly well—neither appeared happy nor to have lived in a safe environment. No, she was obviously undernourished, although clad in what seemed to be brand-new clothes. There was a faint, ragged scar running down her upper arm, just below her left shoulder.

According to Laurel's present legal guardian—Amelia Bones, present Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the Ministry of Magic—the scar on her shoulder was a much more recent acquisition... not the result of an attack by vicious dark wizards or former supporters of Lord Voldemort, as Serenity had initially feared... but the handiwork of Laurel Potter's own neglectful, abusive uncle, Vernon Dursley, now dead as a result of what the report described as a grisly, cataclysmic burst of accidental magic. The man's head had apparently exploded in a blast of blood, bone, and gore.

It took every ounce of Serenity's willpower to remain calm, serene, and collected for the benefit of the no-doubt traumatized girl. Somewhere behind her professionalism and honest concern for Laurel's well-being, however, was a small sense of relief.

Lily and James Potter had saved Serenity's life, and the lives of her family, during the war. Now, in helping Laurel Potter come to grips with the terrible events of the previous week, the Mind-Healer could at last go some distance toward repaying an act of selfless valor that could never be fully repaid.

**~V~**

Laurel had begun to tell her life story without preamble, and though the child couldn't have known it, the uncaring, matter-of-fact tone with which she described her life with the Dursley's said more about the girl's precarious psychological state than words could otherwise have conveyed. The girl spoke of parental neglect as if it were a kitchen appliance. She calmly described her living arrangement—the cupboard under the stairs!—and gave only the smallest half-shrug when relating the comparison between her cousin Dudley's birthdays ("...heaps of cake and presents and gifts and parties while I'm shoved off to this batty old neighbor's house to humor her cat fixation for a few hours...") with her own ("...oh, they never bothered to remember those—it's July Thirty-First, if you care to know, Mrs. Greengrass..."). The only time it seemed like her emotions might get the better of her was when she brought up her most-hated relative: Aunt Marge.

"She's a bitch," Laurel had said vehemently, eyes narrowing dangerously at the ceiling. "She must have been self-conscious about it, too. Why else would she be so dead-set on convincing _me _that I'm a little bitch? Oh, and then there's that dog of hers, Ripper..."

With the exception of Aunt Marge, her relatives—Petunia and Vernon Dursley, and their overweight son, Dudley—had been content to simply neglect Laurel whenever she wasn't cooking, cleaning, or doing other chores for them. Around the time when Laurel had turned five, however, things began to change.

"My first magic trick!" Laurel declared in tones of conversational hilarity. "The girls in class were teasing me because of my clothes. Did I mention those? No idea where Aunt Tuney got any of them, but they were all old and busted, old and busted, and if I got lucky, old and busted but maybe _not_ tacky and mismatched. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, that bint, Amy. She and her friends were teasing me about my clothes and my hair—my hair doesn't want to be nice, you know, I've tried combing it and combing it but it _never _shuts up. Anyway, I tried to walk by 'em and ignore it, yeah? But one of 'em, forget who, she sticks her foot out and trips me, right? And the moment my head hit the desk, I felt this weird kind of _something_, didn't know what it was at the time, but it must've been my magic. And I was really, really mad at them, not to mention dizzy and feeling like, well, like I'd just slammed my head into a school desk, and suddenly all three girls were just magically butt-naked. Never did find their clothes... well, obviously, I must have accidentally Vanished them, I read about Vanishing Spells in one of the books Amelia let me read. _Evanesco,_ right? That one earned me three nights with no meals, locked in my cupboard, but not before Uncle Vernon backhanded me. Strangely, nobody in class remembered it the next day..."

"Anyway, that's when I started to notice odd things happening whenever I got really wound up by something," Laurel went on. "And I got curious and asked Aunt Tuney what it was. She got really scared for some reason, yelled at me for asking questions, called me a freak, and then locked me in cupboard." Laurel fell silent for a moment, contemplating this, and then said: "Scratch that, she called me a freak, _then_ she yelled at me for asking questions when I asked what she knew that she wasn't telling me. That night was when I starting actually _trying _to make things happen, and I almost set fire to my cupboard."

"It was easy!" Laurel said, and now she sounded genuinely enthused. She sat up, turned to look Serenity in the face with a bright, proud smile. "All I had to do was think really painful things, and when I got myself all worked up and was crying and my Uncle Vernon was banging on the door and yelling at me to shut the hell up, I felt it! My magic! And I reached for it and kind of, I dunno, pushed it at my Uncle, and the door caught fire. Well, obviously not the best thing that could have happened, Uncle almost beat me to death when that happened, but from then on, I could bring my magic out easier and easier, so it was worth it."

The casual way Laurel tacked on the point about her uncle beating her half to death was not missed by Serenity at this point in the conversation.

"So, obviously Aunt Tuney and Uncle Vernon didn't like me practicing my 'unnaturalness,'" Laurel went on, not giving Serenity time to interject in any way (not that she could have taken such an opportunity; by this point, Serenity Greengrass was pretty much in shock). "I decided I'd do it on my own, in secret. But I didn't want to set fire to the house, so I took to sneaking out at night and practicing at the park every couple of nights. It took a really long time, but eventually I could make things float! Small things, you know. Just little things. Trying to do anything on purpose was really hard, and when I made myself mad or sad to get the magic going, I could never really get it to do what I wanted it to do. I... er..."

Laurel blushed a bit, displaying unmistakable discomfort for the first time since the therapy session had begun. It was obvious that the longer she talked, the more at-ease she became, in her own weird way. Then, sheepishly but with a proud smile, she said:

"I accidentally turned one of the swings into a, um, a snake. And it talked to me!"

At this point Serenity Greengrass gave a start and exclaimed, "You're a Parselmouth?"

Laurel regarded the Mind-Healer with such blankness that Serenity mentally kicked herself for forgetting that the Girl Who Lived had been ignorant of the magical world until a week ago. Clearing her throat, Serenity clarified: "A Parselmouth is a witch or wizard capable of speaking and understanding the language of snakes, known as 'Parseltongue.' It is a rare, and misunderstood, gift." She trailed off, deciding it might not be wise to mention that the last known Parselmouth had been the murderer of the little girl's parents.

"So you can't speak to snakes?" Laurel asked.

"Not many can," Serenity affirmed.

"Wicked..." the girl whispered with an air of mild wonder. "Anyway, the snake became my secret friend for a little while. It lived in a hole in the playpark, and I sometimes managed to sneak it some food. I caught a mouse in my cupboard once, and Slithers was ever so happy that night. But one night I went to the playpark and he wasn't there anymore. I really miss Slithers..."

Laurel sighed a sad sigh, the kind of expression one might associate with one's plans for the day being put off by a little rain; then she went on to detail how she'd eventually managed to use magic to unlock the locks on her cupboard at will.

"It made sneaking out at night so much easier, because I think Uncle Vernon started to suspect something around then. He'd put this really good extra lock on my cupboard, but it only took me a few days to figure out how magic it open."

To say that Serenity was impressed would be an understatement: the girl had just casually admitted to being able to perform low-level, wandless Unlocking Charms. That level of spellwork was just about where the more impressive cases of pre-Hogwarts wandless magic tended to peak.

_The savior of the wizarding world, a witch with such potential, stuck with those... those..._

Serenity Greengrass made a silent promise to herself that once this day was done, she was going to go straight home and have a good cry. And a bottle of strong, strong firewhiskey. For the moment, she contained her feelings and let the girl speak.

"Anyways, there isn't much to say between then and now," said the girl. "I kept practicing my _unnaturalness_ where Uncle and Auntie couldn't see. I learned to keep myself from getting mad or sad if I could help it, 'cause it seemed like the more I practiced, the more things would happen without my meaning it—I made the television explode once when Aunt Marge was over. I'd rather not talk about what happened after that, so don't ask."

Serenity gave a little tremble: the sole betrayal of her own inner turmoil, at the sudden intensity in the little girl's eyes as she casually commanded her Mind-Healer not to ask about an incident. For the last three words of that sentence, her eyes had gone almost dead, but for all of it, they were also cold... murderous, almost. Serenity wondered if the girl was even aware of the expression, but the moment passed and it melted away to the same sense of deadpan the girl had begun the session with. The sense of ease and relaxation Laurel had managed to collect while talking had abruptly died.

"Laurel..." Serenity said softly after the the Dicta-Quill on the desk behind her patient had stopped copying this last statement down. "I won't push you if you don't want to talk about it yet, but I'm here to listen. Talking about it may be good for you."

Surprising Serenity, Laurel neither denied this outright nor acquiesed. She simple furrowed her brow in thought for a few moments before decisively saying, "Next time. I just don't want to talk about it yet. Ask me again next time, and I'll tell you."

Then, she turned and lay back down.

"That's really when all of it started. Aunt Tuney and Uncle Vernon watched me close after that, and a few months later—last Thursday—Uncle Vernon caught me on my way out of the house at night."

Serenity waited for Laurel to continue; the girl seemed to be considering exactly how to word the next part of her story.

"He'd camped out just inside the front door in a sleeping bag, and I stepped on his face by accident. I was kinda, um, not paying attention that night. I tried apologizing, but he was yelling at me, telling me he knew I'd been sneaking out, he'd known it, and then he said he'd do what he should've done years ago. He said he was going to beat the unnaturalness right out of me, he did, and then he beat me harder than he had in his life and when I thought I was going to die, I panicked and I pulled out my magic and I pointed it at him and I yelled at him to get away from me and then I blew up his head kinda-sorta on purpose, you know?"

Laurel sat up, stood up, ran a hand through her hair. She appeared neither distressed or pleased with the admission, just mildly puzzled.

"All I really did was pull out my magic and point it at Uncle Vernon," she said, "I didn't mean to, well, blow up his head. At that point Aunt Tuney was watching and I guess her Ickle Diddykins had snuck down the stairs to enjoy the show, he always hated me, but then his head exploded and Aunt Tuney shrieked and Dudley threw up and before I knew what had happened, I was out the door and running. The police were called, of course, but it was a Ministry wizard who found me in the park, sitting in my usual spot on the merry-go-round. The rest is kinda boring, really, except the part where they made me drink something and then asked me a lot of questions about what happened. They called it, um... Verida... Veritha..."

"Veritaserum?" prompted Serenity. The ten-year-old girl nodded.

"Right, that. Truth potion, right? And anyway, obviously I can't go back to Aunt Tuney after killing Uncle Vernon, right? So Auntie Amelia took me in, and she's the one who said I should see a Mind-Healer. I told her I didn't need one, but she said I do. Is there something wrong with me?"

Serenity put on her gentlest, most understanding smile and said, "Laurel... what you've been through is horrible, painful—"

"Is there something wrong with my magic?" Laurel interjected impatiently, folding her arms and looking sharply back at the Mind-Healer.

"There's nothing wrong with your magic."

"Then why do I need a Mind-Healer?" Laurel asked. Then, in a shrewder tone: "Is it 'cause I don't feel bad about it?"

Serenity blinked, then said: "Laurel, dear... you don't need to pretend you're not hurting. I know you must be feeling guilty about your uncle, but it's not your fault—"

Laurel blinked. "Why would I feel bad about my uncle?"

She asked this with genuine cluelessness, and Serenity was suddenly aware of exactly how messed-up the Girl Who Lived actually was. As the sessions continued through the remainder of the fall and onward through the winter and spring, she would come to understand exactly why, and that there was really nothing that could be done to undo or repair the damage.

The years of neglect and abuse had very nearly turned the Girl Who Lived, the savior of the wizarding world, this ten-year-old girl, into some kind of sociopath. In retrospect, Serenity would come to understand that the death of Vernon Dursley had actually been a good thing: it had forced the Ministry of Magic to remove the girl from her hateful guardians' custody not a moment too soon.

Not a moment too soon, indeed. She had not, after all, crossed the point of no return... but it was close, Serenity believed. At the rate things had been going that year, the Mind-Healer doubted that Laurel Potter would have lasted long enough to receive her Hogwarts letter.


	2. I: Three Half Bloods and a Mudblood

**Disclaimer:** The _Harry Potter_ novels are works of fiction written by J. K. Rowling, and are not, in part or otherwise, my own intellectual property. I am simply a fan of the series with time on his hands, who decided that said time would be best spent writing a pointless story set in a fictional universe created by a far better, and far _richer_, writer. But if you've half a brain in that skull of yours, you didn't actually need me to tell you that.

**~V~**

**- Chapter One -  
><strong>"**Three Half-Bloods and a Mudblood"**

**~V~**

Tracey Davis wasn't one of the nervous ninnies who took the barrier between Platform Nine and Platform Ten at a run; although it certainly looked solid enough, she had, even at the age of eleven, enough control over her own nerves to understand that appearances should be ignored, that one should have complete faith in the magic behind them. She was also a living example of how badly wizard-Muggle relations could go, so she had some slightly personal reasons for taking extra care not to accidentally alert any of the nearby non-magical people to the presence of a secret, unseen, extra train platform that could only be accessed by those with tickets for the Hogwarts Express.

So what Tracey Davis did was lean casually against the barrier between platforms, the enchanted backpack her father had given her hanging unobtrusively on her back. She looked left, and then right, and then when she was sure she was safely beneath the umbrella of the barrier's Muggle-warding Notice-Me-Not Charm, she slipped backward through the barrier and found herself standing alone in the hustle and bustle of Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. She did not wait for her father to follow, nor bid him farewell, for her father was in fact hard at work at that moment. One of the consequences of having been raised by a single father was that Tracey had long since learned to take care of herself.

It had been a simple matter of catching a Muggle cab to King's Cross station, nothing especially difficult, after all; the worst she'd had to deal with was explaining to the cab driver exactly why an eleven-year-old girl was traveling to a train station by taxi alone, but as her father had ordered the cab himself, the flimsy half-truth that she was traveling by train to a boarding school went unchallenged. Still, Tracey would rather her father had been allowed the opportunity to see her off in person...

Shrugging off that thought for the third time that morning, Tracey weaved through the crowd, trying to ignore the pang of jealousy she felt as she passed a pack of red-haired wizard children and their rather plump mother, a picture of familial affection (right down to the little girl crying to be allowed to the school, despite not yet being old enough). Those were probably the Weasleys, she realized—notorious for their pro-Muggle leanings, she knew, her father occasionally had words with Arthur Weasley at the Ministry, and thought it a shame that the man was paid so little for such a potentially vital job—the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office was, after all, part of the ongoing effort to ensure that Muggles remained both unharmed by and unaware of the magical community. That was a cause Tracey could get behind, but she thought Arthur's love of Muggles to be quite foolish. Naïve, at least. Arthur and his family were purebloods, their interest in Muggles a result of never really having been exposed to them... no one in that family, she knew, could ever have been abandoned by a Muggle parent who regarded their child's magical blood as some kind of curse, the touch of evil... no, to the Weasleys, Muggles were all kind, lovable people who got along so well even without magical solutions... curiosities at best, she thought... but she knew better... the wizarding world had segregated itself from the Muggle community long ago, and had flourished for it...

Without a family to say goodbye to, Tracey had no reason to linger on the platform, so she swiftly boarded the scarlet steam-engine and flitted from compartment to compartment, peeking through each door in turn, hoping to find a likely starting point. She had been fairly lonely at home, her father spending so much of his time keeping bacon on the table (for which, don't get her wrong, she was eternally grateful). She had never really had a chance to make any close friends her own age, and as she moved from window to window, passing over those occupied mostly by older students or boys, the eleven-year-old half-blood witch felt a small, steady tremor of rising anticipation. This was it, after all—the start of her life, for all intents and purposes. She would be working toward her future as a witch from this day forward, learning how to use the gifts she'd been born with (_Gifts, mother, you pious, old-fashioned bint!_). And she'd be surrounded by others, like herself, others her own age, whom she could talk and laugh with, as equals...

She found herself sliding open a likely-looking compartment after a while: in this one sat three girls, one whose face (Tracey noted with a guilty surge of humor) resembled something like a pug; another, sitting by the window, was staring out at the platform with her hands folded carelessly on her lap, already dressed in her school robes—Tracey got the weirdest impression in that moment that his particular girl had discarded her Muggle clothing at the earliest opportunity, as if disgusted by it, probably the child of one of those smarmy pureblood-maniac families. Her hair was jet-black and wild, shoulder-length, and at the side of her head Tracey spied a simple pair of round-framed glasses. Sitting next to this girl was a kind-faced redhead, who seemed to be trying to strike up conversation with the pug-faced one.

Conversation faltered as the door slid open, and Tracey asked brightly (internally bashing her nerves on the head with a mallet to shut them up as she did): "Mind if I sit here?"

The girl with the pug's face gestured demurely to the seat next to her, and the girl across from her said, "Of course!" Something in the first girl's expression set off quiet warning bells in Tracey's mind... she appeared to be regarding her with a haughty, almost superior air. Tracey added the pug-faced girl to the list of possible pureblood-maniac children she'd been keeping in her mind: now there were two. She'd have to be careful around these, she knew. Her father, who had been a member of Slytherin House in his day, had gone to great pains to warn her against those who might persecute her if her Muggle lineage came to light...

The third girl, the one with the untidy black hair, didn't even acknowledge the intrusion. She just kept on staring out the window. Well, Tracey mused, at least the redhead seemed friendly enough.

"I'm Susan, Susan Bones," the redhead said, smiling, as Tracey plopped down in the seat next to the pug-faced girl. "What's your name?"

"Tracey Davis," the newcomer replied. Then, quirking an eyebrow at the black-haired girl's robes, she said, "Bit eager, are we?"

The black-haired girl probably didn't even realize she was being addressed, but at that point Susan said, "And this is my... cousin—" The black-haired girl's head snapped around sharply, regarding Susan with a flat, deadpan sort of _don't you even think of finishing that sentence_ look, and Susan rolled her eyes, continuing: "...who wishes to remain nameless. Which is silly, by the way."

Taking the black-haired girl's features in for the first time, Tracey's first impression was of beautiful, deep green eyes that seemed more jaded than they were designed to be. Beneath the girl's untidy, windswept fringe was a bandage, wrapped tightly about the girl's forehead like a headband.

"What happened to your forehead, Nameless?" Tracey asked, before she could stop herself.

"Huh? Oh, Quidditch accident," the black-haired girl said with a shrug as she turned back to stare out the window again. "Took a Bludger to the head this morning. Auntie's not exactly a pro Healer, though, so we decided to leave it to the school nurse."

Tracey's eyebrows quirked upward at the phrase _school nurse_, which sounded so... _Muggle_. Not a pureblood, then...?

"So you're into Quidditch!" Tracey pressed—for some reason, she had this irresistible urge to get into the black-haired girl's head.

"Of course I'm into Quidditch, who _isn't _into Quidditch?" replied the girl, sounding amused.

"What team?"

"Holyhead Harpies."

Her strange desire to get inside the black-haired girl's head was suddenly forgotten in a blind frenzy of Quidditch fan rage: the Holyhead Harpies had recently flattened her own team, Puddlemere United, in a league match that had lasted no longer than eighteen minutes.

"Oh, you are so full of it—you probably only support them 'cause of that one match last month! Well, they got lucky! You just wait 'til the next Puddlemere-Harpy match, you'll see! They'll—"

"I'm not a fan because they beat Puddlemere, I'm a fan 'cause they're the only team that ever seems to let girls play as Beaters," said the Harpy-fan blandly. "That's the position I like to play."

A derisive, shrill little laugh sounded from the un-named, pug-faced girl: "Beater? What, did you try batting the Bludger away with your face, or something?"

The Harpy-fan turned her flat, deadpan stare on the pug-faced girl for a few moments, quirked an eyebrow and said calmly, "And... _you _would be one to criticize _my _Quidditch performance because...?"

Having failed to provoke, or even to garner any sort of ill-at-ease reaction from the black-haired girl, the pug-faced pureblood had no answer for this, but Susan evidently smelled some form of trouble, for she broke in with a diplomatic answer: "Pansy, she was just paying a little too much focus to disrupting the other team's Seeker at the time, that's all. She's actually a really good Beater."

There was a slightly cold undercurrent to Susan's voice: apparently, between this and whatever conversation they'd had prior to Tracey's entrance, the redhead's opinion of Pansy wasn't altogether favorable. Neither was Tracey's, truth be told, and she was silently grateful that Susan Bones and this nameless black-haired girl were in the compartment with them—Tracey didn't really fancy the prospect of trying to get on this haughty little girl's good side. She would have tried, of course—better to make friends than enemies, after all, enemies just make trouble for you later on—but with someone else in the compartment she could safely sit back and pay Pansy only a token level of attention.

The black-haired girl turned her eyes back to the window, and a few moments later the train began to rumble away...

**~V~**

Tracey Davis struck up some good conversation with Susan Bones, although really, the two didn't have much in common. Susan evidently only had a passing interest in Quidditch, so that topic resulted in a lot of smiling and nodding on her part, which fooled Tracey not at all. Eventually talk drifted to Hogwarts itself, a point which Susan was a lot more knowledgeable on, as a she had read portions of her cousin's copy of _Hogwarts, A History_. Every so often, Pansy Parkinson would cut into the conversation. At one point she criticized Susan for having read so much about Hogwarts—which actually elicited a brief reaction from the mostly-silent black-haired girl, who quirked another eyebrow at Pansy a second time and made a calm suggestion that reading more books would aid Pansy's ability to invent more creative insults. Susan was, again, the one who diffused what might have turned into an argument between the two girls, and the black-haired girl returned to staring out the window.

"So," Tracey said, breaking the slightly awkward silence that followed that encounter, "which House do you guys think you'll be in?"

"Slytherin," Pansy Parkinson said without hesitation, and rather proudly.

"Isn't Slytherin the one everyone says turns out more dark wizards than the others?" Susan asked slowly, looking from Tracey to Pansy in an almost apologetic way, as if willing them to understand that she meant no insult by this.

"Well, that just comes with the territory, doesn't it?" Tracey said reasonable, cutting across Pansy, who had sneered and opened her mouth as if to retort. "Slytherin House values cunning and ambition, and of course dark wizards tend to be cunning and ambitious, but then, so do politicians."

"There's a difference?" the black-haired girl asked with an air of mock-surprise, turning momentarily away from the window that'd had her so transfixed.

Tracey seemed to mull this over for a moment. "...Fair point," she conceded with a mischievous smirk. "But all jokes aside, my dad was a Slytherin, and he's as nice as they get."

"Isn't your father one of those grunts in Magical Maintenance?" Pansy cut in with a sneer. All the good humor that Tracey had gathered seemed to vanish with a pop, as if it had Disapparated.

"So what if he is?" she said evenly. Pansy's response was lost, however, as the compartment door slid open and a head of extremely bushy brown hair leaned in.

"Excuse me," said the bushy-haired girl, looking from one face to another. "Have any of you seen a toad? A boy named Neville's lost one."

"Nope," said Tracey and "Sorry, no," said Susan; Pansy looked on the verge of laughing, and a moment after the others had spoken said, "Who would want a _toad_?"

The black-haired girl, however, seemed to consider the question a bit, and after Pansy had said her piece, looked the girl in the eye and said, "No, I haven't, but do you know its name? You could get someone to try a Summoning Charm."

The black-haired girl's three companions all turned in surprise, perhaps at how good the idea was, or perhaps at the girl's sudden decision to be helpful. Tracey was certainly surprised by that, if nothing else. The way the black-haired anomaly seemed to be disinterested by them all, she'd written her off as antisocial and selfish. Perhaps she'd spoken too soon?

The newcomer's eyebrows rose a bit, and she echoed, "Summoning Charm? Of course, I hadn't thought of that! Oh, but of course, that's Fourth Year material, isn't it, I'll have to ask one of the older students—"

"I think I can do one, actually," the black-haired girl said, and she reached into the left sleeve of her robes. She withdrew her hand, leveled a handsome-looking, eleven-inch wand of holly at the compartment doorway and said, "Stand back—er, what was the toad's name?"

"Trevor, I think," the bushy-haired girl said.

"Right—_Accio Trevor the toad!"_

Several seconds passed, and nothing happened. Pansy rolled her eyes.

"Well, the toad might not be in range, might be in a closed compartment, or I might've done the spell wrong," murmured the black-haired girl, almost to herself. As she did, she lifted her left hand to her forehead and stroked at the bandage, as if longing to scratch at something underneath. "Let me try again—_Accio Trevor the toad!"_

And this time, something happened: there was a surprised yelp from somewhere outside the compartment, and the bushy-haired girl gave a small squeak a moment later and called down the train, "Oh, _Neville, _it was in your cargo pocket!" A moment later, a large toad zoomed into view, made a sharp mid-air turn, and shot into the black-haired girl's outstretched hand.

For the first time since Tracey had clapped eyes on her, the black-haired girl's flat expression broke—into a wide, pleased grin. She stood up and held out the toad, keeping a firm grip on the struggling thing with both hands, and handed it to the bushy-haired girl, who turned back into the compartment with a sigh of exasperation but a relieved smile nonetheless.

"Well," she said. "At least we found it." At that moment a round-faced boy scampered into view and she handed the toad to him. This, Tracey supposed, must be Neville.

"Thanks," he muttered, blushing in embarrassment and glancing at the black-haired girl who'd Summoned his toad. Said girl seemed to be fighting back her own pleased grin as she sat down and resumed staring out at the passing countryside, although now she seemed more interested in glancing at her own holly-wand, which she had not yet stowed away. She muttered a quiet, "Don't mention it."

Susan Bones graced the back of her cousin's head with a knowing smile that Tracey had no means of deciphering, but then their attention was diverted again by the bushy-haired girl, who said almost breathlessly, "That was amazing magic, I've read about Summoning Charms, you know, we're not supposed to know how to work those for another three years, it's amazing that you were able to do that in only two tries—have you been practicing at home? I suppose you must live in a wizarding home, then. I'm Muggleborn, so the most I could do was read all of my schoolbooks and try to brew some simple potions. I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, who are all of you?"

"Muggleborn," snorted Pansy scathingly, and the atmosphere in the compartment instantly went cold. Hermione, standing in the door, at first turned confused, hurt eyes on the pug-faced girl, but then noticed that Susan was almost glaring at Pansy, as if in disbelief that she could be so uncivilized; Tracey shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to antagonize anyone before she knew which of them she might be forced to share a dorm room with.

But then the black-haired girl turned her deadpan gaze on Pansy and said in a low, dangerous voice: "My _mother _was Muggleborn."

Pansy turned, startled, toward the girl with the untidy black hair, whose wand rested comfortably across her knees. The girl was regarding her with a flat, chill gaze that might have frozen her blood in her veins if it had been accompanied by any accidental magic. Pansy opened her sneering mouth to retort, but seemed to think better of it halfway through the first syllable. Perhaps it occurred to her that if the black-haired girl were capable of a fourth-year charm, she might know a fourth-year curse or hex as well. She settled for an indignant, haughty huff, and then she got to her feet, reached up and heaved down her school-trunk, and turned to the compartment door.

"Out of the way," she snapped, and Hermione, surprised, complied without a word. As Hermione stepped back from the door and Pansy Parkinson left the compartment, Tracey couldn't shake off the impression that Pansy had only just barely restrained herself from adding "mudblood" to the back-end of that command.

"Don't pay any attention to her," Susan Bones said the moment Pansy was out of sight, looking back and forth between Hermione and the black-haired girl—Tracey couldn't tell which one she was really trying to comfort. "The Parkinson family takes a lot of pride in being what wizards call 'pureblood.' It's a whole lot of bigoted nonsense. Auntie always says some of the best witches and wizards she's known have been Muggleborn."

Hermione eased into the compartment and shut the door behind her with only one uncomfortable, backward glance. "I've read about some of that," she admitted, "but I didn't expect to—I didn't think anyone on the train would be so unpleasant about it, you know, if only because of You-Know-Who."

"Who?" said the black-haired girl, quirking an eyebrow. At this, Susan rolled her eyes, Hermione turned a surprised glance on the black-haired girl, and Tracey exclaimed, "You have _got _to be _joking._"

Tracey, incredulous, slid over to where Pansy had been sitting so she could look the black-haired girl square in the eye. "You _seriously _don't know about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? He's only the darkest bloody dark wizard there ever was!"

Susan sighed an exasperated sigh as the black-haired girl said, in tones of faux realization: "Oh! You mean Voldemort. Yeah, I've heard of that guy."

Susan flinched a bit, but seemed to have been expecting it. Tracey, on the other hand, jumped nearly out of her seat at the sound of the name. Hermione tilted her head to one side, looked from Tracey to Susan and then to the mischievously grinning black-haired witch, and said, "You said the name?"

"You said the name!" Tracey echoed with an air of cautious wonder.

"Of course she said the name," Susan muttered in a long-suffering kind of voice, and then she reached over and gave her cousin a hard slap to the back of the head.

"It's only a stupid name," the black-haired girl protested as she rubbed at the back of her mussed-up hair. "Honestly. He's been dead for like ten years, hasn't he? And don't hit me, I'm injured!"

"It _is _a bit silly, isn't it? Being afraid of a name?" Hermione suggested, somewhat shyly, as she sat down next to Tracey.

"Exactly," muttered the black-haired girl.

Tracey continued to stare at the black-haired girl as if she'd never seen anything like her, so Susan turned to Hermione and held out a hand. "I'm Susan Bones. You're in for your first year too, I suppose, Hermione?"

Hermione turned to Susan and smiled—Tracey, her attention at last diverted from the black-haired girl, noted that Hermione's front teeth were a bit overlarge. "Yes, yes I am." She turned to the other two girls expectantly. "And you are?"

"Tracey Davis," said the first girl easily, but the black-haired girl shifted a bit and said,

"You'll find out at the Sorting, I'm sure."

Hermione frowned a bit, and Tracey shot the black-haired girl a puzzled look, but Susan said, "Don't mind my cousin, she's being silly."

Hermione's eyes drifted to the bandage on the girl's forehead, and she began to form the question, "What happened to your..." and then her eyes widened, and her mouth opened to say something, but the black-haired girl snapped, "Please. Don't."

It was a strained, weary demand. Tracey got the oddest impression that the black-haired girl was extremely tired of something... well, she supposed, if people kept asking about her head injury it _might_ get tiresome after a while.

Hermione blinked and then quickly nodded; Susan bit her lip and then with the air of casting around for a change of topic, said, "So—Hermione. What House do you think you'll be in?"

"Well, I'm hoping to be in Gryffindor, it seems by far the best, although I don't suppose I'd mind if I got Sorted into Ravenclaw, would you?" Hermione said, resuming the fast, almost breathlessly eager tempo she had taken before Pansy had huffed out.

"Gryffindor?" the black-haired girl echoed skeptically, furrowing her eyebrows. "...I guess that wouldn't be too bad... I mean, my parents were both Gryffindors, I'm told, but the best House? I don't know."

"Gryffindor!" snorted Tracey Davis, sounding mildly derisive. "I don't know why everyone seems to think that's the best house. I mean, think about it. Slytherin, for cunning people, Ravenclaw, for people who love to learn, and Hufflepuff for people who work hard. Bravery's all well and good, but aren't those other things a bit more important? That's what Daddy always says, anyway..."

Hermione bit her lip lightly and said, "When you put it that way, I see what you mean."

"I expect I'll be in Hufflepuff, myself," said Susan. Her mouth twitched upward a bit. "My whole family's been Hufflepuff for generations, after all, and I see no reason to break the Bones tradition of being fair-minded and hard-working."

"I think I'll be in Slytherin, myself," Tracey said, with a bit of trepidation, and Hermione turned a look of surprise on her.

"Isn't that the house You-Know-Who was in?" she asked.

"Who?" asked the black-haired girl. Susan promptly delivered another slap to the back of her head.

Tracey sighed. "_Yes_, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was a student in Slytherin House. _Yes_, many of his followers were, as well. That doesn't mean all Slytherins are evil. My dad was in Slytherin, and he's the nicest guy I know."

The black-haired girl nodded and said, "Aunt Amelia says that dark wizards are cunning and ambitious, but that not all cunning and ambitious people turn out to be dark wizards. I'd love to be a Beater for the Holyhead Harpies someday, that's ambition, isn't it?"

"Exactly!" said Tracey. "Thank you. That's exactly what I mean. And all of that 'cunning' might just be a natural talent for Quidditch strategy. What about you, Nameless?"

The black-haired girl shrugged and said, "Ravenclaw or Slytherin, I guess. Somehow I don't see myself as much of a Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, but you never know. The Hat might see something I never knew was there—that's what Aunt Amelia told me, anyway."

"Hat?" Hermione asked.

"The Sorting Hat," Susan answered. "It's a magical object that the school uses to sort new students into Houses—you put it on, it looks inside your head, and puts you in a house depending on what kind of person you are."

"You mean it reads your mind?" Hermione said. "But isn't that a little... personal?"

"Don't worry," laughed Tracey. "The Sorting Hat never gives out anyone's secrets, not even to the Headmaster of the school. Daddy says it might talk to you while you wear it, though."

"So, have any of you had a chance to practice magic before this?" Hermione asked eagerly, looking first to the black-haired girl and next to Susan and Tracey.

"I wish," muttered Tracey. "But Daddy wouldn't let me have a wand until I turned eleven. Even in wizarding homes, practicing magic outside of school isn't allowed. I get why, I suppose—getting spells wrong can be dangerous, but I don't get why I'm not even allowed to practice the easy stuff."

"Aunt Amelia's the Head of Magical Law Enforcement," said the black-haired girl carelessly, and Susan nodded in agreement, "so she's pretty strict about stuff like underage magic. The best I could do was read a lot and memorize a lot. That Summoning Spell was in one of Auntie's old textbooks."

Hermione seemed to relax as the three of them basically admitted they had no more magical training than she had. "I couldn't practice at all, of course, since I live in a Muggle house—the Ministry would know right away, wouldn't they? I guess I thought the three of you might have had a chance to get a head start."

"Some families do skirt the law on that point," said Susan, frowning. "Because the Trace can't tell who casts a spell if the subject is in a wizarding home, it's up to the parents to keep their children in line. Some pureblood families teach their children some magic before they go to school, so that they'll appear superior to Muggleborn families at first. There have been attempts to pass laws to discourage that, but those families have a lot of influence with the Ministry... they probably fight to keep those laws from going through."

Tracey snorted. "Oh, yeah, I've heard. My dad has a friend on the Wizengamot who was over for dinner one day, and he was complaining about that. He said it didn't really matter, though, because by the time students get to the more advanced stuff, they'll all have evened themselves out anyway. By the time everyone hits third year, it's all about how good you are."

"Well, the best I could do was to learn all my coursebooks by heart, of course, I do hope it'll be enough—" Hermione began, but—

"Blimey," said Tracey. "Stop right there. Are you serious? All of your coursebooks... by heart?"

When Hermione nodded with an anxious smile, Susan said, "Definitely a Ravenclaw."

The black-haired girl, however, seemed less impressed than the other two, and returned to staring out the window. "I can't say I have it all memorized," she said with a shrug, "but I've read through them all, too."

"Have you?" Hermione said enthusiastically. "Which was your favorite? I can't decide. Personally, I'm most interested in Transfiguration, it seems really complicated, but if I had to pick a close second it would probably be Potions, there's just so much to it. _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi—_I could hardly believe how many magical plants and ingredients there are, it's a wonder that wizards have managed to keep so much of it from Muggles, and the same could be said of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_, I mean, really, I wouldn't have believed it a week ago if someone had told me there were really such things as dragons and trolls..."

And so it went, for the rest of the train ride. Hermione did most of the talking, really, and Tracey's initial impression was that she was a bit of a know-it-all, but she and Susan seemed to hit it off reasonably well. The black-haired girl returned to staring out the window, but Tracey could tell she was listening, because occasionally she would say something about whatever the current topic of conversation was.

And then the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station, and they caught their first glimpse of the castle...

**~V~**

**Author's Note:** Yeah, I'm pretty much eating my words. I know I said I'd focus on _The Whims of Fate_, I know I really need to finish the stories I've already started before I go barreling into any new ones, but I'm just in such a Harry Potter mood right now, I can't help it! Anyway, getting a bit of a slow start on this one, I'm not sure how I feel about it so far, but I'm looking forward to getting it moving just the same. I have only the vaguest idea of where I want it to go, though...


	3. II: Or Perhaps in Slytherin

**Disclaimer:** The _Harry Potter_ novels are works of fiction written by J. K. Rowling, and are not, in part or otherwise, my own intellectual property. I am simply a fan of the series with time on his hands, who decided that said time would be best spent writing a pointless story set in a fictional universe created by a far better, and far _richer_, writer. But if you've half a brain in that skull of yours, you didn't actually need me to tell you that.

**~V~**

**- Chapter Two -  
><strong>"**Or Perhaps in Slytherin..."**

**~V~**

The silhouette of Hogwarts Castle—a centuries-old fortress of magical learning with a history nearly as convoluted as that of wizarding Britain itself—towered above them as the boats approached. Through its many windows the flickering of torchlight shown out, and from this particular angle, it was both breathtaking and imposing: she could see the castle itself on the surface of the water, a rippling, inverted reflection. The crazy thought of what it would be like to traverse such an inverted castle briefly crossed her mind, and she idly mused that it might make for an interesting twist in some kind of videogame (this, of course, made her think of her father, who was for some reason in love with those Muggle gaming contraptions; Tracey herself could see the appeal somewhat, even if she didn't quite feel it herself).

Initially, Tracey had thought it foolish and frivolous that all first-year students would traditionally be taken into the castle by boat rather than by way of the thestral-drawn carriages she had spied—for yes, she was reminded, and it sent a chill down her spine to remember the incident that had caused this: she could, most definitely, see the thestrals. That she wouldn't have to go anywhere near the things was a relief, of course, but she didn't come to really appreciate the reason for the tradition until she saw the castle from this vantage point. It really was the best first impression of the school she could imagine having; she made a mental note to check _Hogwarts, A History _some time to see if it said anything about when this particular aspect began.

As the boat drifted along and they drew nearer the castle, she dimly registered Hermione Granger muttering something in breathless, excited tones to Susan Bones, both of whom shared the same boat with her. The nameless black-haired Holyhead Harpies fan remained silent, but when Tracey managed to yank her own eyes away from the castle, she saw that her un-named companion was even more obsessed with drinking in the sight of the castle than she was: the black-haired girl's green eyes glittered hungrily as it swept over the many torchlit walls and spires, and at one point after Tracey returned her own gaze to the school, she heard the black-haired girl whisper to herself, under her breath—she wouldn't have caught it were it not for a favorable breeze—that the castle was more impressive than pictures could show. Nobody but Tracey herself noticed Tracey's absent-minded nod of agreement.

Soon enough, they were upon the cliff on which the castle stood; "Heads down!" called the overlarge, shaggy-bearded man who had ushered them onto the boats, and the waterborne convoy passed under a curtain of ivy into a wide tunnel. When the boats arrived at the dark, underground harbor, Tracey reluctantly added "creepy" to the list of things this tradition had proven to be, although this was mainly because Tracey had a deep-seated fear of dark, damp places... which reminded her of why she could see the thestrals, a train of thought that took a little more willpower to shut down than Tracey would care to admit.

The four girls disembarked as one: Hermione continued to yammer on, which was mildly annoying to Tracey yet slightly endearing at the same time—Tracey felt like some of her own trepidation was being unwittingly siphoned off and expressed through the little know-it-all beside her, so that Tracey didn't have to fulfilled the obligatory "do or say something stupid" quota herself. Or perhaps her annoyance with the never-stop-to-take-a-breath ways of her bushy-haired acquaintance just took her mind off of what was coming? Either way, she decided to count her blessings...

"Oy, you there! Is this your toad?" called the shaggy-bearded man as he checked the boats; the boy who'd lost his toad on the train appeared to have lost it and found it all over again. Neville happily called out the toad's name, and Tracey shook her head mournfully at the boy's misfortune: now everyone in his year would know that he happened to have a pet that had long since fallen out of fashion. A derisive snort at this point brought Tracey's attention around to a boy nearby, with slicked-back blonde hair and a pale, pointed face—by his appearance, and his haughty, superior sneer as he watched the boy claim his toad, Tracey immediately pegged him as a Malfoy. She could only hope the boy wouldn't be teased too severely about it... woe betide him if he wound up in Slytherin now...

Susan was quite good about listening to Hermione's prattle—perhaps, Tracey mused, Hermione's inclusion in their little train-compartment conversations had been a good thing for the girl. She had that sort of overzealous personality that kind of turned Tracey off to her, and would most certainly turn many others off in much the same way. Susan was one of the gifted few who could look past that sort of thing, it seemed. Making a friend like that early on could only be good for the girl... perhaps, Tracey hoped rather than believed, it would mellow her out a little, and Tracey herself could be friends... although, if House rivalries got between them...

They emerged onto the sloping lawn at the front of the castle, and Tracey forced her thoughts away from House rivalries—she knew, just knew, that she would be in Slytherin, and although it was the House she wanted to be in, it was also the House with the most drawbacks. She really didn't want to acknowledge the half of the glass that happened to be empty just yet.

"I wonder..."

It was faint, but Tracey heard it: the black-haired enigma was talking to herself.

"...if I wind up in Slytherin," she murmured, sounding mildly amused by the idea, "how will everyone take it? Stunned, awkward silence, maybe...? How long until someone accuses me of being an up-and-coming 'Dark Lady' or something...?"

Tracey wanted to say two things at once: first, to reassure her that not everyone thought that way, and second, to ask just why the girl thought that her being Sorted into Slytherin would mean anything more than anyone else being sorted there—would her guardians disapprove, perhaps? She had time for neither, however, as the large man knocked three times on the front door of the castle and it swung open at once, bringing all thought and banter amongst the first-years to a screeching halt.

A tall, stern-looking witch in emerald-green robes emerged.

"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall," said the large man dutifully.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here," said Professor McGonagall.

"She'll be the Transfiguration professor, then," said the black-haired girl knowingly, and Tracey nearly jumped out of her skin at the unexpected input. On her opposite side, she heard Hermione let out a little, tremulous "eep," obviously more nervous now that she knew she was in the presence of one of the teachers she had the most motivation to impress.

Tracey knew she wasn't the only one gawking like an idiot at the massive Entrance Hall as McGonagall led them through it; it truly was an Entrance Hall of epic proportions, every bit as impressive as her father had been able to relate in words and then ever so much more. It was, thus, somewhat anticlimactic when the professor led them into a side-chamber rather than into the Great Hall, where Tracey could already hear the voices of the rest of the school—and where she knew they would soon be devouring one of Hogwarts's infamous opening feasts, she remembered as her stomach gave a soft rumble beneath her robes...

As the first-years crowded into this chamber, they all gravitated toward one another in their nervousness; Tracey felt a brief, grateful rush of relief as her three companions from the train drew closer to one another, even, surprisingly, the black-haired girl. Perhaps, she hoped, the girl's distant air was just her way of dealing with the pressure... it would be nice to have one good friend in Slytherin, and she already knew this girl wouldn't hold her half-blood status against her... she had a feeling that Pansy Parkinson already knew, somehow; how else could that pug have known her father worked in Magical Maintenance?

"Welcome to Hogwarts," began Professor McGonagall in tones equal parts warm and cordial. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are hear, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room. The four Houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each House has its own noble history and each had produced outstanding witches and wizards."

Tracey blinked exactly one time, wondering in that instant how many students in this school actually saw things that way. She knew from her father's occasional reminiscences that only two of the Houses (Gryffindor and Ravenclaw) were regarded by the general populace in a positive light. Hufflepuff was often regarded as the House for all of the leftovers, those who weren't brave or brainy enough for the other three; Slytherin, of course, had that whole "dark wizard" reputation attached to it.

"While you are at Hogwarts," McGonagall continued, "your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours."

Tracey distinctly heard the black-haired girl mutter the word "childish," and blinked again. It struck her as somewhat galling that an eleven-year-old girl would call such a long-standing tradition "childish," but really, Tracey herself had been thinking along the same lines...

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting."

"So no pressure if you happen to have inherited your dad's hopelessly un-brushable hair, or anything," said the black-haired girl, just loudly enough that those near her could hear it. A few chuckled, and Professor McGonagall's stern gaze fell on said haircut.

For a moment, it looked like she was amused, but all she said was, "I shall return when we are ready for you. Please wait quietly."

The Transfiguration teacher turned and left the chamber, and a few moments later, as subdued and nervous chatter broke out around them, Tracey found herself blurting out: "I hope none of you are in Gryffindor."

She was almost sorry she said it, if only because she cut into one of Hermione's breathless discourses. Susan, Hermione, and the black-haired girl all looked at her in surprise, but from behind them a boy's voice snapped, "What's wrong with Gryffindor?"

The four girls all turned their eyes to this boy, who stood mere feet away. He was red-haired and gangling, quite a bit freckly as well. A Weasley, Tracey realized: traditionally, a Gryffindor family.

"What _is _wrong with Gryffindor?" Hermione echoed in less confrontational tones, returning her attention to Tracey.

"That's not—that came out wrong," stammered Tracey, eyes darting from the Weasley boy to Hermione and back again. "It's just that Slytherin and Gryffindor students tend to hate each other—"

"With good reason," the Weasley boy said darkly. "Wait a minute—are you saying you want to be in Slytherin?"

"Well, yes—"

"Who'd want to be in Slytherin?" the Weasley boy asked incredulously, turning to look at the boy next to him. "Blimey, if I wound up there, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

The boy in question only smirked in reply.

Tracey fought back the urge to defend her father's House. Of course, she realized: the Weasleys were traditionally Gryffindors, so they'd naturally be spoon-fed anti-Slytherin propaganda from the moment they were weaned from their mother's—

"She's just saying she doesn't want House rivalries to come between us," Susan Bones cut in, stepping protectively between Tracey and the Weasley boy. "Right?" she added, glancing at Tracey.

"Yeah, exactly," said Tracey. "I just thought the four of us could keep being friends, you know, but if any of you are in Gryffindor, that might—" _That might cause problems with my housemates. _"Well, some people might not like that."

"She's saying she'll disown you to stay on their good side," the Weasley boy said warningly.

"She's saying the other Slytherins and Gryffindors would make a fuss, actually," the black-haired girl said knowledgeably. "Uncle Remus talked about that in his letters—especially back then, the two were at each others' throats, because Voldemort was on the rise and a lot of Slytherins shared his prejudices. Mum was a Gryffindor and had a friend in Slytherin, and apparently spent a lot of time defending him from the other Gryffindors."

It seemed that half the room twitched at the name "Voldemort," but before anyone could say anything about either her brazen use of the Dark Lord's name or the fact that her Gryffindor mother had been friends with a member of the dark-wizard-House, all six of them were distracted by something a little more alarming than the name of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or such appalling concepts as inter-House friendships: several kids on the other side of the room screamed.

Tracey whipped around in alarm; the black-haired girl turned calmly on the spot and said, "Ah, the ghosts..."

And ghosts it was: about twenty of the pearly-white things had drifted through the back wall, seemingly in the midst of an argument.

"Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance—" the ghost of a fat little monk was saying, but a ghost wearing a ruff and tights cut him off.

"My dear Friar, haven't we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he's not really even a ghost—I say, what are you all doing here?"

It was the black-haired girl who answered.

"We're first-years and we're waiting for the Sorting," she said dryly, not at all perturbed by the sight of the specters before them. "And you know that, obviously, since you've probably been here for ages and ages."

"Oh, poppycock. Spoil all our fun, then," grumbled the ghost in the ruff and tights.

"Well, one of them had to call our bluff eventually, Nicolas," said the Fat Friar jovially. "In any event, I hope to see you all in Hufflepuff! My old House, you know."

"Move along, now," came the sharp voice of Professor McGonagall, who had apparently returned while the first-years were all distracted by the ghosts. "The Sorting Ceremony is about to start."

The ghosts floated away through the wall opposite the one they'd entered, and McGonagall directed them all to form a line.

As the students all moved to stand in line, Hermione said, "Did you mean that, Tracey?"

"Mean what?" Tracey asked.

"...That you wanted to be friends with us."

"Of course I did," Tracey said. "Why would you think otherwise?"

"I—I didn't," Hermione said nervously, and then, speaking fast and breathlessly: "Anyway, it's like Susan said—I'm probably a Ravenclaw, and Susan's probably a Hufflepuff, and you know what L—what our other friend said, she's probably either Ravenclaw or Slytherin. So don't worry. And even if I'm in Gryffindor, I wouldn't let that get in the way. If you still want me as a friend, that is."

Tracey wanted to say something to express her thanks, at least for the sentiment, but now the line was moving and it was probably best to stay quiet. That was, until they entered the Great Hall, which totally wiped all thought from all of their heads.

Dazzling, it was: massive, with the four long House Tables running its length and a fifth table on the far side where the school staff would dine, it was full of floating candles and its ceiling, the most eye-catching thing in the room was—

"It's bewitched to look like the sky outside," whispered Hermione. "I read about it in _Hogwarts, A History_."

Tracey realized a moment later that the eyes of the entire school were on them, now, and felt goosebumps spring up along her arms in spite of the comfortable warmth of the place. As the line came to a halt in the space between the House Tables and the High Table, Professor McGonagall produced—or perhaps conjured?—a four-legged stool from seemingly nowhere, placing it in front of the first-years where they, and all of the other students, could clearly see it. On top of this, she placed a patched, frayed, and obviously old pointed wizard's hat. For a few seconds, everyone in the Hall was silent. Then a rip near the brim of the hat opened and the hat... burst into song.

Tracey blinked again. Her father hadn't said anything about the Sorting Hat singing to them.

"_Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,  
>But don't judge on what you see,<br>I'll eat myself if you can find  
>A smarter hat than me.<br>You can keep your bowlers black,  
>Your top hats sleek and tall,<br>For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat,  
>And I can cap them all.<br>There's nothing hidden in your head  
>The Sorting Hat can't see,<br>So try me on and I will tell you  
>Where you ought to be.<br>You might belong in Gryffindor,  
>Where dwell the brave at heart,<br>Their daring, nerve, and chivalry  
>Set Gryffindors apart;<br>You might belong in Hufflepuff,  
>Where they are just and loyal,<br>Those patient Hufflepuffs are true  
>And unafraid of toil;<br>Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,  
>If you've a ready mind,<br>Where those of wit and learning  
>Will always find their kind;<br>Or perhaps in Slytherin  
>You'll make your real friends,<br>Those cunning folk use any means  
>To achieve their ends.<br>So put me on! Don't be afraid!  
>And don't get in a flap!<br>You're in safe hands (though I have none)  
>For I'm a Thinking Cap!"<em>

The song was followed by Hall-wide applause, and the hat actually _bowed._ What an amusing magical object...

"So we've just got to try on the hat!" Tracey heard the Weasley boy exclaim a few spaces to her left. "I'll kill Fred. He was going on about wrestling a troll."

Tracey rolled her eyes at the Weasley boy. Definitely a Gryffindor—too thick, and bigoted, to be anything but. Tracey glanced once to the left and right; everyone in line seemed just as nervous as she was—Tracey felt a bit queasy, actually—except for the black-haired girl, who was looking flatly up at the sky-ceiling with the resigned air of wanting to get the whole thing over with.

Professor McGonagall stepped forward now with a long roll of parchment in hand.

"When I call your name," said the professor, "you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be Sorted." Then, looking down at the list in her hands, she began with:

"Abbott, Hannah!"

A girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line and took the hat. Tracey had only a moment to register that she thought her father had a co-worker by the name of Abbott before the hat shouted, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

Applause engulfed the middle-right table, and Hannah went to sit down with her new Housemates.

"Bones, Susan!"

Susan stepped forward, with one nervous smile back at Hermione, Tracey, and the black-haired nameless girl. She sat down, McGonagall placed the hat on her head, and barely three seconds later:

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Susan let McGonagall remove the hat, and as she scuttled off to join Hannah at the Hufflepuff table, she sent one more smile back at her friends in line.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

And so it went. McGonagall would call a name, and the hat would call a House, and that House would applaud their new addition. "Brocklehurst, Mandy" joined Ravenclaw, and then "Brown, Lavender" joined Gryffindor's ranks to loud catcalls from a pair of red-haired twins who could only be members of the same Weasley family as the bigoted git they'd encountered in the side-chamber. Then an unusually heavy-set girl named "Bulstrode, Millicent" became the first new Slytherin, and Tracey had the sobering thought that in any new female cliques that popped up, Bulstrode would likely only fit in as a type of bodyguard or enforcer for one of the more popular girls... much like "Crabbe, Vincent," the Slytherin who followed, who looked both trollish and rather dim.

"Davis, Tracey!"

With a small gulp, Tracey stepped forward and sat on the stool. When McGonagall set the hat on her head, it very nearly covered her eyes. There was a moment's silence, where the hat seemed to be contemplating something.

"Hm," it whispered in her ear. "A Slytherin if ever I saw one, and yet, you have reservations about the House you already expect to be Sorted into..."

Well, yes, of course she had reservations. She was a half-blood after all, and with so much pureblood prejudice in that house—

"Oh, I know, I know," the hat assured her. "I just wanted to give you this chance. You have other qualities, after all: you are, for one thing, very loyal, your desire to enter Slytherin House despite your half-blood status is a show of loyalty to your father, yes? I simply suggest that, if you wish to try your hand with a different House, you may do quite well in Hufflepuff..."

_Hell, no! _she screamed in her head. _Why would I want to go to Hufflepuff?_

The hat merely chuckled at her indignant reply. "Just a thought. You'll be in for a rough ride in Slytherin, but of course, you know this already. But if you want an out, I'm perfectly willing to Sort you into Hufflepuff instead."

_No,_ thought Tracey firmly at the Sorting Hat. _No, Slytherin is where I want to go. I want to make Daddy proud—I want to be the best Slytherin I can be, like he did. Please, put me in Slytherin!_

"The best Slytherin you can be," the hat said, sounding happy with her answer. "Yes, I had hoped you might say that—and you've already made potential ties with other Houses, as well. I'll not lie, Slytherin House needs children like you. Hold fast to your resolve, and you will go far in Slytherin—much farther than you would as a Hufflepuff."

A moment passed, and Tracey, knowing what was coming, smiled a brilliant smile—

"SLYTHERIN!"

**~V~**

Hermione bit her lip as Tracey strode over to the table on the far-right, where the rest of Slytherin welcomed her with applause—applause which she noticed was more reserved, more dignified, than the other Houses, with none of the camaraderie she'd noticed at the Gryffindor table. Speaking of which...

Hermione glanced at the table in question as Tracey sat down. Gryffindor had seemed so appealing to her—she had considered Ravenclaw, but part of her was afraid that being Sorted there might forever identify her to her peers as a nerd, a bookworm. Gryffindor was a House characterized by courage and daring, and some of the most amazing figures in wizarding history had attended Hogwarts in that House—not least among them the current Headmaster of the school, Albus Dumbledore, widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful wizards in the world, who had discovered the twelve uses of dragon's blood and defeated the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald nearly forty years ago...

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Finnigan, Seamus!"

But now, but now... Hermione bit her lip. Was it worth getting caught up in House rivalries, potentially straining a budding friendship, just to be part of a House which (now that she thought about it) might be a little over-glorified? Part of her still wanted it, but...

"GRYFFINDOR!"

No. On second thought, perhaps she would be happier if the Hat placed her in Ravenclaw. She would most certainly be placed with other students who took their studies seriously if she were placed there—maybe, maybe even if the school came to know her as a nerd and a bookworm, she'd have enough friends who were also nerds and bookworms that she wouldn't care as much. And she could still be friends with Tracey Davis...

"Granger, Hermione!"

Hermione gave a little start, having spaced out and more or less ignored the Sorting while she sorted out her own thoughts. Her own eagerness blunted by indecision, she walked, rather than ran, to sit on the stool and allow Professor McGonagall to place the talking hat over her eyes. As she sat, she glanced over to where Tracey sat at the Slytherin table—and saw that Tracey was watching, apprehensive, hopeful...

The hat dropped over her eyes, and began to whisper in her ear:

"My, my... it's not every year I have the honor of Sorting a student as studious as you," it said. "You might even be a bit _too _studious, if it's possible to be too studious."

Hermione had to stop herself from letting out a haughty snort. "Too" studious? You could never be "too" eager to learn!

"Oh, I don't know about that," the hat said, clearly amused. "But you are very loyal. Quite brave, as well. Perhaps you'd do well in—"

_Please, not Gryffindor! _Hermione thought frantically—and it was in that moment that she realized she had actually, firmly decided against that House. _Please—not Gryffindor. And certainly not Slytherin. I'll gladly go to either of the other two, but please—_

"Not Gryffindor?" the hat asked, sounding both impressed and almost mockingly incredulous. "I've never been asked that before, at least not in the same breath as 'not Slytherin.' Interesting... you are quite right, by the way. You are, first and foremost, an eager learner and a sharp mind. You would make a fine Gryffindor, but one finds their place in the world most easily when surrounded with others of like mind. I expect top marks from you, young lady, and nothing less—but take care and don't burn yourself out in the process. RAVENCLAW!"

Hermione let out a breath she hadn't noticed she'd been holding, smiled, and as she joined the Ravenclaw table she looked over toward the Slytherins, where she could just barely see Tracey Davis watching her, looking both pleased and relieved.

**~V~**

Tracey waited anxiously as Hermione sat on the stool with the hat over her eyes; beneath the table, she crossed her fingers and hoped. She seemed so much more like a Ravenclaw, yes, definitely a Ravenclaw—

"RAVENCLAW!"

It took a bit of effort not to burst into applause along with the Ravenclaw table, which might have seemed like a breach of House loyalty to the rest of Slytherin House—had Tracey been a part of any of the other three tables, she certainly would have, but she knew that it was bad enough that she was a half-blood in the den of snakes; calling attention to herself at this stage would be a bad idea. So she settled for meeting Hermione's eye as she stood from the stool—Hermione looked to her almost immediately, and Tracey felt instantly guilty for considering her even slightly annoying.

"Greengrass, Daphne!"

As the girl in question, a dignified girl with long, black hair, strode forward with a kind of practiced grace that suggested to Tracey that this particular pureblood had endured quite a few etiquette lessons prior to receiving her Hogwarts letter. The girl sat demurely on the stool and Professor McGonagall placed the hat over her eyes. It took roughly ten seconds to decide this time, and then:

"SLYTHERIN!"

Tracey applauded softly as the rest of her House clapped in honor of their latest addition, but Tracey was watching this one with calculating eyes, not really putting any thought into the motion. Greengrass... that was a pureblood family, she knew, but a neutral one. Truthfully, she had no idea whether the Greengrasses subscribed to pureblood supremacy, but their stubborn refusal to side either for or against Voldemort in the last war suggested that maybe, just maybe, Daphne Greengrass might be a good person to throw support behind if one happened to be a half-blood looking for someone to—

Daphne's eyes met Tracey's as she reached the table and shook hands with one of the female Prefects, and Tracey cut off her own thoughts, forcing her face into something a little more neutral. Daphne must have noticed something, though, for she changed course—it was barely perceptible, but where she had once appeared she might sit next to one of the second-years, she made instead to take the seat directly across from Tracey.

The Sorting soon continued. "Goyle, Gregory" joined the Slytherin table and sat next Crabbe; Tracey could easily envision the pair acting as bodyguards for the same person, probably someone richer and cleverer than either of them. Soon "Longbottom, Neville" was called to the stool—Tracey blinked at the name, and saw the round-faced boy who'd lost his toad on the train stumbled and fall as he made his way to the stool. Longbottom? That was a pureblood family, Tracey recalled, a Gryffindor family to boot. Her father had said something about a pair of Longbottom Aurors who had been tortured into insanity by Death Eaters shortly after the Dark Lord fell...

Neville sat on the stool for quite some time before it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!" and then in his eagerness to reach the safe haven that was the Gryffindor House Table, he ran of with the hat still on his head—Tracey winced, fighting back a chuckle of her own as the applause that had initially greeted his Sorting devolved into a gale of laughter that was particularly strong with the Slytherins. Oh, that boy would be a popular target, she just knew he would...

"MacDougal, Isobel!" became a Ravenclaw, and then:

"Malfoy, Draco!"

_I knew it,_ Tracey thought morosely as the blonde-haired ponce she'd noticed earlier sauntered forward to take the hat, and sure enough, it barely touched his head before it shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"

Internally, Tracey groaned. The Malfoy family was rich, influential, and most definitely pureblood-supremecist. With the Malfoy heir in her year, she would definitely need to keep her head down. Although, she thought ruefully, it could be worse—instead of being a half-blood girl, who he may well just ignore, she could have been born a half-blood _bloke _and been expected to tag along as if he were Lord High Ruler of the Multiverse. Draco certainly strutted well enough on his way to the table to believe he might... and sure enough, he sat down right by Crabbe and Goyle... so that answered the question of whom would employ their enforcer services...

Tracey watched the rest of the sorting impassively, wondering when she would find out the name of her mysterious, nameless companion from the train. "Moon, Lily" wasn't her… then "Nott, Theodore" joined the Slytherin table, the Notts were another pureblood family whom her father had warned her to be wary of... then "Parkinson, Pansy" joined the Slytherin table, and Tracey allowed herself a small sigh, for now she'd be sharing a room with the pug, joy of joys... interestingly enough, "Patil, Padma" was sorted into Ravenclaw and then her identical twin, "Patil, Parvati," was declared a Gryffindor... "Perks, Sally-Anne" wasn't her nameless friend, either...

"Potter, Laurel!"

And Tracey froze. The rest of the hall went deathly quiet for an instant, and in that moment Tracey understood—the reluctance to introduce herself, the bandage over her forehead and the flimsy excuse, there had _been _no Quidditch accident! And Hermione must have figured it out... but why? Why would she hide that...?

The girl with the unruly black hair stepped forward, eyes sweeping the hall, and the moment the whispers broke out, Tracey clearly saw her grimace a bit. And that answered Tracey's question, more or less.

_She doesn't like her fame. Huh..._

Tracey remembered Laurel saying she saw herself as either a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw, and now she understood the significance of the girl's muttered musing as they made their way toward the castle. How _would _everyone take it if the Girl Who Lived, the one who somehow survived the Killing Curse and vanquished the Dark Lord Voldemort as an infant, was Sorted into the very House from which that dark wizard had arisen? The irony itself was reason enough to doubt, but Tracey realized with a rush of anticipation that this was her one big hope: for Laurel Potter was a half-blood, had already expressed dislike of anti-Muggleborn prejudice, and maybe, just maybe, having the Girl Who Lived as a friend within Slytherin House might be enough to protect her...

Laurel Potter sat on the stool and the hat dropped over her eyes, and Tracey once more crossed her fingers beneath the table.

**~V~**

Laurel Potter hated the way people whispered and pointed whenever she walked out into the wizarding public—at first there had been a certain novelty to the fact that she was known and loved, considered somehow special, and on some level she knew she could use that to make life easier for herself down the line. But right now all she cared about was that it was bloody annoying and she wished she'd thought to bring a pair of earplugs so she wouldn't have to endure the whispers.

"_Potter_, did she say?"

"_The _Laurel Potter?"

And of course, they were all leaning and craning to get a good gawk in as the hat dropped over her eyes. Bloody hell...

"Hmm," the hat whispered in her ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Sharp as a tack, you are, and potentially the most cunning student here... and a fair measure of courage, as well. And you're certainly not afraid of a little hard work, are you? So, then, what shall I do with you...?"

_I always saw myself as a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw, if that helps, _Laurel thought cheerfully—her mood much improved by the fact that she could no longer see the see of gawping fools with the Sorting Hat covering her eyes.

"Yes, indeed—you would certainly do well in either house, although... yes, I see your point. The irony _would _be amusing, although, are you sure? You could be great, of course, it's all here in your head—and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that. However—"

_A lot of little Death Nibblers in that House this year, _Laurel noted with an imperceptible nod of her head. _Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott... those are names I've heard associated with Voldemort. Might be a bit of a risk..._

"On the other hand," the hat said, "there is that saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer."

_Took the thought right out of my head, hat,_ Laurel thought with a little smile.

"It's what I do," the hat said pompously. "SLYTHERIN!"

**~V~**

Tracy's hand fell limp beneath the table; she could hardly believe it. Across the table, had she not been staring at Laurel in shock, she might have noticed the satisfied smirk that now adorned the face of Daphne Greengrass, or she might have noted the almost hungry, calculating way that Draco Malfoy was watching Laurel as the girl removed the hat from her head and handed it to a slightly gobsmacked Professor McGonagall. As it was, she only noticed the way Laurel looked first at McGonagall and then at the Gryffindor table, which was silent, a few of its students openly aghast.

A few moments of stunned silence, and then the Slytherin table erupted into the loudest applause yet. Laurel smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes—and then those eyes met Tracey's and the smile reached them. Laurel walked around to the Slytherin table and it seemed everyone between her and Tracey stood and shook her hand and offered her a seat (_Bloody suck-ups_, Tracey thought), but Laurel declined each one flatly, none more forcibly than Pansy Parkinson (who seemed a lot keener on Laurel now that she had a little more information than "my mother was a Muggleborn"). After a few moments one of the Prefects stood and called order to the table, and Laurel took advantage of the distraction to skirt around Malfoy (after a stiff shake of his hand). Laurel made an obvious beeline for Tracey and, before she could ask, Tracey slid over and freed up a space.

"You got your awkward silence, just like you expected," Tracey said lightly once the Sorting had resumed. "Maybe you should take up Divination, it looks like you might have Seer's blood..."

Laurel shrugged and gave a rueful little smile and then stared directly ahead. She seemed to be trying to avoid looking toward the front of the room.

"So... Laurel Potter, huh?" Tracey said.

"Yeah," Laurel sighed. "Just... don't stare, when you see my scar. I hate it when people do that. And no, I don't remember anything, I was a bloody infant at the time. Sorry I didn't say something sooner, I just... well, people look at me different once they know who they're talking to, you know?"

Tracey reached over and gave her a little pat on the back. "No sweat, I was just surprised, is all. Although I guess it's my own stupid fault for not picking up on it like Hermione did."

While they spoke to each other in hushed voices, "Thomas, Dean" was sorted into Gryffindor and "Turpin, Lisa" became a Ravenclaw. But Tracey's attention was drawn away from Laurel when the name "Weasley, Ronald!" was called.

As Tracey had predicted, Ron Weasley took a mere second to Sort into Gryffindor. And then "Zabini, Blaise" was sorted into Slytherin, and... made a beeline for the empty space next to Daphne Greengrass.

"Of course," she heard Laurel mutter darkly as the androgynous boy slid into place next to Daphne. Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the hat and stool away, and then, at the High Table, the man sitting at the very center stood up.

He was a very old man in a very flashy, almost stereotypically "wizard" robe, with a very long, silver beard; his eyes twinkled behind half-moon spectacles. From what Tracey knew of Muggle pop culture, Albus Dumbledore most snugly fit the standard "Gandalf the Grey" ideal of how a wizard would look and dress. The Headmaster opened his arms wide in welcome, beaming down at the students, and Tracey got the impression that this man really and truly loved his job.

Of course he did, though, she realized. With the skills and reputation he had, Dumbledore could easily have had any job he'd wanted—her father had even told her that he'd been practically begged to serve as Minister of Magic on multiple occasions, yet had turned the position down in order to continue at Hogwarts.

"Welcome!" said Dumbledore. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!

"Thank you!"

He sat back down and the Great Hall broke into clapping and cheering yet again. Tracey snorted back a laugh, but next to her, she heard Laurel make a loud derisive noise. Glancing at her friend, she saw her staring directly ahead still, and now it seemed less like she was avoiding looking toward the front of the room than avoiding looking at _Dumbledore._

"Well, _I _thought it was funny," Tracey said sheepishly as the food appeared from nowhere all along the five tables.

Laurel gave a noncommittal shrug and began piling food onto her plate with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. Tracey glanced at the High Table, where Dumbledore was now looking over his half-moon spectacles directly at the Slytherin table... no, at Laurel Potter, she was sure of it. And he suddenly didn't look as cheery as he had a moment ago. He looked tired. Old.

The moment passed, and Dumbledore was his old self again. Tracey pushed it from her mind, turning instead to the sumptuous feast in front of her. There was a story here, she was sure of it, but it was probably a story for another time.

But as she tore her eyes from Dumbledore, something else caught her eye: a large, purple turban. Tracey stared at it, and blinked.

Then, she broke into a small fit of giggles.

Laurel turned to Tracey and quirked an eyebrow. "What's so funny, Trace?"

Wordlessly, Tracey pointed to the High Table, where one of the professors was engaged in conversation with another. Reluctantly, Laurel looked toward the High Table and her eyes fell on the professor with the large, purple turban.

Her grim, ill-tempered look dissolved into one of bald incredulity. Really, she knew wizarding fashion could be weird at times, but how could someone bear to be seen in public wearing a thing like—

"_Ow!"_

Laurel clapped a hand to her bandaged forehead and winced. Startled, Tracey turned to Laurel and said, "What? What happened?"

"My scar just... never mind," Laurel muttered. "Never mind, it's nothing."

Laurel, still rubbing at the lightning-bolt scar concealed beneath her bandage, looked up at the High Table again, at the professor with the odd purple turban. But her scar did not hurt again, so she dove back into her meal.

She didn't even bother to notice the man the professor in the turban happened to be talking to—the hook-nosed, sallow-skinned man with the greasy black hair—and wasn't even looking in Severus Snape's general direction when he turned his black eyes toward the Slytherin table, where they lingered for a bit on the celebrity with the unruly black hair, round glasses, and deep-green eyes...

**~V~**

**Author's Note:** I'd intended to have this chapter run right on up to when the student went to bed, but then I realized I don't really have anything to write about after the Sorting that really belongs in this chapter at all. So yeah... anyway, it's a pretty run-of-the-mill "Sorting Chapter," nothing special, but I'm proud of it. You might notice that this chapter is most from Tracey's perspective. That's going to be a common thing in this story, for the record.

As anyone who's read the book itself will know, many pieces of dialogue in this chapter and a large chunk of the sequence of events come from _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ almost word-for-word, including the Sorting Hat's song. I don't intend to do this often, but there are some points where events in the canon timeline simply won't have changed at all, and I see little point in trying to play around with exactly what is said or what happens simply for the sake of making it "mine" when it clearly isn't mine to begin with.


End file.
